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Sochi 2014: Five Olympic sports Canadians would like to see

Canadians won more gold medals (14) than any other country at the last Winter Olympics in 2010, but could we have won even more? Here’s a look at some events where Canadians dominate, but which haven’t made the Games menu — yet:

Snowmobiling

At 3,300 kilometres, Cain’s Quest bills itself as the longest and toughest snowmobile race in the world. The biannual Quest — which starts in March — has a purse of $100,000 and a route that meanders through some of the most remote areas of Labrador. Only about half the entrants ever finish because it’s so gruelling. This year, 30 teams of two have signed up. All are from Canada.

One of the competitors is Kirk Hastings, 43, a lifelong snowmobiler who also entered — with teammate David Price — in 2008, 2009 and 2011.

Hastings and Price were in contention for the title in 2011, running second until a late mechanical failure prevented them from finishing.

Hastings excels at navigation, which comes in handy on a course that is largely unmarked. He manages race strategy. Price is the caretaker, the mechanic, the labourer.

It isn’t a high-speed race, with snowmobiles averaging 40 kilometres per hour. It’s an endurance test. There are sleepless hours in the bush, engine failures, extreme cold and chest-deep snow to combat.

Many friendships fail. Hastings says his wife wants to compete next year — but he says he loves her too much to agree.

Ice fishing

Canadian champion Calvin Perry, 30, has gone ice fishing on Lake Simcoe every year since he was 5. Perry and partner Kenneth Prentice won last year’s national title on the same lake. By the halfway mark, though, he and Price were in 19th place.

“I told my partner ‘We have to get up there.’ We finally did,” Perry recalls by phone from his home in Holland Landing, near Newmarket.

On the second day, Perry caught two whitefish and two ling so large that they jumped into top spot. The catch-and-release competition requires much more than fisherman’s luck. Success relies on knowing where to place the fishing hut, which lures to use and the ability to exercise patience, said Rosa Sharpe, president of the Canadian ice fishing championship.

The weight of the catch is the criteria on day one. On day two, length matters.

About 150 anglers are expected to compete in this year’s Canadian championship — held once again on Lake Simcoe, on the final weekend of the Sochi Olympics from Feb. 21-23 — making it the largest ice fishing event in the country, Sharpe says: “It’s big because anywhere the lake freezes, people can fish. They just drill a hole and they sit there, whether it’s inside a hut or they just sit on a pail.”

Although the rewards are a bit small — Perry and Prentice split just less than $3,500 — there is one similarity between the national derby and the Winter Games.

“You get a trophy, and you get a necklace,” Perry says. “It looks like a gold medal.”

Although it has yet to send a team, Canada can send an entry to the world championship — which a Russian team won last year in Wausau, Wisc.

Snowshoeing

Snowshoe racing is a cardiovascular workout that can knock the wind out of accomplished athletes. There’s no momentum in snow, just hard slogging, says Mike Caldwell, who organizes a series of events — Mad Trapper Racing — on his Gatineau, Que., property.

There are few countries that can qualify athletes for international events — Canada is one of them — even though snowshoes have been used for hundreds of years.

“The funny thing is, Canada doesn’t really have (a formal organization),” says Caldwell, who is working on setting up a Canadian Snowshoe Association with a view to increasing awareness of the sport.

“It’s really quite intense, and it’s simple to put a race on. It wouldn’t be rocket science to put it in the Olympics,” says Lise Meloche, who spent 10 years on the Canadian national biathlon team and competed in the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics. She now divides her time between cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.

A world snowshoeing championship was held in Quebec in 2012. The women’s title was captured by Maria Grazia Roberti of Italy, though the vast majority of entrants were from Canada and the U.S. Men’s champion David Le Porho hailed from Montreal.

“It’s a bit of a North American phenomenon, but it’s getting more popular in Europe and different places. Because it’s so accessible to people, I can see it becoming (an Olympic event) for sure,” Meloche adds.

Dogsledding

For Normand Casavant, dogsledding is special — a way of life. It involves a huge amount of esoteric knowledge, especially when it comes to caring for the Alaskan Huskies. Casavant has 38.

“It’s crazy all the stuff we have to know, and you have to love it, too,” he says from his home near Tagish, Yukon. The 51-year-old was the top Canadian finisher in the 2013 Yukon Quest, a punishing, 1,000-mile sled dog race from Fairbanks, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon. A musher for 27 years, he’s entered again — the race starts Saturday — and hopes to beat last year’s time of 10 days, two hours and 56 minutes.

Along with wife Karine Grenier, he puts in hours of preparation after work each day: running, massaging, feeding and cleaning the dogs. Daytime hours are spent in the bush as a forester for the territorial government.

During training, which begins late August, the dogs begin to build endurance just like marathoners — except these athletes pull an ATV. And like any Olympian, the second most important thing after training is eating.

They devour specialty kibble, take supplements, eat special fats and meats — including beaver imported from Quebec — which all costs more than the top prize this year, around $23,000, and doesn’t include vet bills.

“It’s all about love and respect, too,” he says. “These dogs become your friends, become your family.”

The musher must prepare mentally in order to endure the long days and nights of minus-50C temperatures, limited sleep, blizzards — and keeping the dogs motivated through it all.

“I would like to see the sport getting bigger,” he says. “For sure I’d love to see it as an Olympic sport.”

Dogsled racing was an Olympic demonstration sport in 1932 in Lake Placid, N.Y., and 1952 in Oslo, Norway, but has never been a medal event.

Snowball throwing

It might be a quintessentially Canadian pastime, but competitive snowball fighting has gone international. Yukigassen — Japanese for “snow battle” — is gaining popularity around the world.

Players assemble on a snow court 10 metres wide by 40 metres long. Each team of seven gets 90 machine-made snowballs per nine-minute game, during which they try to eliminate opponents dodgeball-style.

The sport has been popular for two decades in Japan and made its mark in Canada in 2013 at the Canadian Rockies Snow Battle Yukigassen championship, held in Jasper, Alta., last November. The winners, known as the Canadian Snowbattlers, move on to the world championship, to be held for the 26th consecutive year in Hokkaido, Japan, from Feb. 22-24.

Smaller tournaments have been staged in seven provinces since 2009, when Carrie Ferguson brought the sport to Canada. Ferguson, executive director of Yukigassen Canada, and other enthusiasts dream of making snow battle an Olympic sport.

At the world final, the Olympic theme song is played and a torch is lit during the opening ceremonies. The two international competitions overlap this year.

“We think we might have a chance (to make the Olympic menu), maybe,” she says.

Ferguson, a stay-at-home mom in Penticton, B.C., now devotes much of her free time to making that happen.

The national champions are still trying to raise the $23,000 required to head to Hokkaido again this year.

It started as a lark, says team member Matt Smith, who built a full-size court in his backyard just east of Edmonton. They even have a $1,200 snowball machine. No one has ever beaten a Japanese team at the worlds, but Smith and his eight buddies keep trying.

“Now we take it really serious,” Smith says.

Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Holland, Russia, Finland, Norway and the United States have also sent teams to Japan. To Smith, it’s just a matter of time before Yukigassen appears at the Winter Games.

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